Google

I applied off-campus for the Google Software Engineer Intern role and got shortlisted after my resume was reviewed. The first step was a telephonic discussion with the recruiter. We talked about my projects, coding experience, competitive programming profiles and the programming language I preferred for DSA. This was followed by the technical interviews. The first technical round lasted around 45 minutes. I was given a binary-tree problem and initially spent some time clarifying the constraints and explaining my approach. I came up with a recursive solution and discussed its time and space complexity with the interviewer. After getting the basic solution, the interviewer asked how I could make it more efficient. I explained the optimization and implemented the final approach while dry-running it on a few examples. The second round was more challenging. The interviewer gave me a greedy-based problem that took some time to understand. I explained a couple of possible approaches, but I got stuck while trying to derive the optimal solution. Instead of immediately moving on, the interviewer gave me a small hint, which helped me identify the key observation. I then completed the solution and discussed the complexity and edge cases. Real Google India intern reports describe similar medium-to-hard DSA rounds where interviewers provide hints when candidates get stuck. The interviews were highly interactive, and I was expected to keep explaining my thought process throughout rather than silently coding. After the final evaluation, I received a call from the recruiter confirming that I had been selected for the Google SWE Internship. The biggest takeaway for me was that communication mattered just as much as reaching the correct solution. I had to stay calm, ask the right questions and make progress even when the problem wasn't immediately obvious.